Liquid dispensers release a liquid upon user activation. Various configurations of liquid dispensers exist. The liquid can be dispensed in a discrete or continuous fashion. The liquids being dispensed can be soap, shampoo, other hand sanitizer or lotion, cleaning agents, etc. Liquid dispensers can be manual, e.g. operator pushes a lever, or can be automatic, e.g. activated upon motion detection. The applications of liquid dispensers are numerous and include soap dispensing in bathrooms, soap or shampoo dispensing in showers and baths, sanitizing dispensers for use in operating theatres or treatment rooms, sanitization facilities for factories, school dining halls, etc. Liquid dispensers typically employ anti-bacterial soap and are often used for hygienic and infection fighting purposes.
Refillable liquid dispensers can be wall mounted and can be judiciously situated to conveniently serve a number of operators for sanitization in key locations such as prior to entry to the dining hall, in the toilet, at the entry to and within a patient room, or prior to operating in the operating theatre.
Yet the functionality of promoting hygiene of such liquid dispensers can be entirely compromised by soap contamination resulting from the refill process. In the worst case scenario, instead of preventing spread of harmful bacteria, the liquid dispenser can itself become a harbour of dangerous, and even infectious, bacteria and promote the spread of such bacteria. Recent studies have shown that one in four bulk soap dispensers in public lavatories suffer from bacterial contamination. Such contamination can result in the spread of infectious diseases and, particularly in hygiene critical locations such as hospitals, even death.
Despite the highly significant threat associated with contamination during refill, the prior art fails to adequately address this problem.
One means to ameliorate the threat of refill-related contamination is to employ the use of replaceable cartridges that are sealed. The seal of the cartridges is pierced upon installation in the liquid dispenser. Sealed cartridges can be subjected to high-quality contamination control at the point of manufacture and the potential for contamination during transit, prior to installation is reduced. Furthermore, regular replacing of the liquid container from which liquid is dispensed in the dispenser safeguards against bacterial accumulation in the dispenser container. An example of such a seal and piercing arrangement can be found in the soap dispensing system of U.S. Pat. No. 4,149,573. Hygienically sealed cartridges are also available in which the outlet from the cartridge is sealed with a valve, an example of which can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,556,005. Wherein the valve is mechanically opened only as the cartridge is fitted into the dispenser. Hygienically sealed cartridges that are sealed with a disposable pump are also known in the art, and example of which can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 6,082,586. In all of these examples the product within the cartridge is protected from contamination by the preclusion of air ingress as the product is evacuated, this is achieved through allowing the cartridge to collapsing as the liquid product is expelled.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,341,629 discloses a liquid dispenser for volatile liquids comprising a pressure sensor.
A significant drawback of such a cartridge-based system is liquid wastage arising from refilling prior to the currently installed cartridge becoming fully depleted. Time to depletion is generally unknown and unpredictable. Refilling at the point of depletion may not be convenient, particularly as the liquid dispenser is then rendered temporarily, and depending on the application potentially unacceptably, unusable pending replacement of the cartridge. Liquid dispensers tend to be refilled during nightly shifts by janitors or other service providers. Thus the temptation is to set the refilling frequency and container volume such that during ordinary or even heavy use the liquid dispensers will never become depleted and rendered temporarily out of action. But replacing a cartridge prior to depletion of that cartridge undesirably results in liquid wastage. This not only leads to increased costs, but unnecessary disposal or wastage is out of keeping with the trend of the times to promote reduced impact to the environment, otherwise known as being environmentally friendly.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,708,006 attempts to address this drawback by providing a check valve assembly that can be fitted to a container and provides a one-way valve through which liquid can be transferred into the container. The check valve assembly has a pointed tip that pierces the wall of a liquid container and the check valve assembly can be subsequently mounted to the container. A liquid reservoir, pump and hose are provided to enable fluid to be pumped through the hose to the container via the check valve assembly. In this way a cartridge refill system can be retro fitted to facilitate partial refill of a non-empty cartridge.
Whilst U.S. Pat. No. 8,708,006 addresses the problem of liquid wastage resulting from refilling prior to depletion by allowing topping up of liquid in containers, it fails to adequately address the problem of contamination arising from the refill process itself, and in this sense may be thought of as providing one step forwards, two steps backwards. Mitigation against contamination is ultimately sacrificed in favour of a more practical means of refill.
In keeping with the remaining pier art, U.S. Pat. No. 8,708,006 fails to adequately address the problem of contamination of the liquid owing to exposure of the liquid to air during the refill process.
Yet prevention of exposure of the liquid to air is a crucial factor in mitigating against contamination arising from the refill process.
Embodiments of the present invention can provide partial refills without sacrificing mitigation against contamination.
There is also a deficiency in the prior art in terms of providing filling hoses that are arranged to control a pump and thus the delivery of fluid to fluid dispensers from the refill process.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,341,629 discloses a liquid dispenser for volatile liquids comprising a pressure sensor.
Embodiments of the present invention can provide a smart plug and play filling hose that can provide control of the pump and hence the refill process.